My old man hired a young Sudanese guy as a designer for his Mechanical Engineering firm. He had gone to college in Europe studying Naval Architecture. Josef was a few years older than me, and one of the nicest guys out there... regardless of his Muslim faith.
He was grateful to be in America, and had a childlike wonder about pretty mundane things to the everyday American that takes everything for granted.
My dad refered to him as his “Black son”... it was pretty close to the truth. Whenever I feel the need to put out a blanket statement that we need to shoot all of them... I recall Josef.
Absolutely there are great Muslims and, frankly, I have done business with some.
I had an interesting experience with one in particular in about 2007. He came to our business because he managed homes for his employer all over the world. We are in the Coachella Valley and he had an extravagant home here.
After we talked awhile he decided he wanted our company to do some work. He asked me what the deposit would be. Now he knew that I knew they were Arabic. His employer was Sheik (I won’t say the name). And the manager himself was obviously middle eastern. I told him for the type of work involved we did not normally take a deposit and they could pay when the work was completed. The look on his face was one of shock.
We did the work. We were told to bill an attorney in Los Angeles. We did and we were paid. They called us back three more times and each time we billed the attorney in LA.
The last time we were called the property manager wanted us to work on his home in the LA area. He told us what he wanted and asked for a quote and before we started the job, he presented us with a check in full.
Not very long after this we received a routine notice of bankruptcy and we were listed as a possible creditor. Apparently each of the Sheik’s homes was in a separate corporation and the home in our area was actually in a corporation in the name of the Sheik’s wife (or one of them anyway). In the real estate market crash they had been unable to sell and used the bankruptcy laws to get out of the home.
Of course, they owed us no money, but they left quite a few holding the bag.